On our bike ride yesterday, I picked up a flat. That's Matt's expression for getting a flat tire. I like how he says that, as though I was meandering down the trail when I noticed something sparkly peeking out from the scrub, so I stopped and picked it up. "Oh, look," I might say. "It's a flat!"
That's my alternate reality. What really happened is, I ran over an ugly thorn in just the precise way, so that it lodged its ugly thorniness all the way through my tire and into the tube.
Because I married Macgyver, Jr., Matt had my tube replaced in five minutes flat (get it? flat?), and we were back on our way.
The interruption in our ride got me thinking about all the flats we pick up in the course of a day, those irritations that force us to stop, assess, and correct before continuing on our way. I'm not one of those chirpy gals who looks for the good in every situation, but I do wonder about the sweetness we miss when we constantly push onward and upward.
I know a very fine man who puts it this way: "Time does not contain God. He exists in the past, present, and future. However, we humans can only exist in the present. So the present is the only place where we can meet God."
Most of the time, I have one eye balefully analyzing all that happened yesterday, last year, or ten minutes ago ... and the other concerned about what might happen tomorrow, next year, or in the next ten minutes. What would my life look like if I kept my gaze gently in the right here, right now?
I suspect I'd start seeing a lot of sparkling somethings calling out to me from the scrub.
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